> >BTW: <sharp> -- Lat. <acer>. But Rum. <acru> means "sour". So, if I
> >include <iute> for "sharp" (e.g. in chili con carne), then I have
> >to drop <acru>, and no one sees this reflex of <acer>. (On top of that,
> >of course that all kind of... acritudes must be... acid and... sour. :-)
>
>But the Swadesh 'sharp' is 'sharp' as in a 'sharp knife'! It's painful
>having
>to put down a loanword when the native word is still in use.
Okay, but IMHO this illustrates the limits of such comparisons: as soon
as a word, such as <sharp> or in German <scharf>, has a multitude of
meanings and connotations, the simple comparison tends to be of no
use. E.g., if the context restricts <sharp> to its meaning pertaining
to blades, then in Romanian you'll have to choose a different word (a
participle of a verb, used as an adjective and adverb, <ascutzit>).
>And I have argued that the English word for 'person' is <man>, which
>would knock the Romance score down.
Oh, I see this point now: the criterium would then be "select items
from the basic vocabulary, whilst avoiding neologisms or high style
terms, if possible." Well, in this case, in Romanian <om> would fit
those contexts, too (for instance: in certain social plus regional
strata of Romanian native speakers one goes on using <om> in
the sense of... a male person; on top of that it is typical (is it a
pan-Romance phenomenon, too?) that, whenever among several people
enumerated there is only a man, the entire sentence constructions
must observe masculine morphology. So, ...).
>On the other hand, the Romance word 'people' would probably be
>the appropriate gloss for *'persons' (presumably plural nouns are
>*not* on the list).
This English-Romance word can't be translated as it should be (hence
another kind of semantic difficulty, IMHO); i.e., in Romanian & al.
languages, one has to choose different words depending on contexts,
but words that could be ambiguous. Unlike in German, where
<Leute> gives a 100% translation for the plural <people.>
>And in colloquial
>English, I think the word for 'belly' should be <tummy>, a Romance
>word of Greek origin, so it's swings and roundabouts. (The
>alternative would be <stomach>).
This is a further semantic problem, which depends on perception
(cultural, social, regional peculiarities). I.e., the hypergastric
thesaurus vs. hypogastric thesaurus. :-)
Actually, <stomach> is the muscular sack that digests the chow;
<belly> is the "container" of another kind of digestive apparatus.
Different functions, different anatomic niches. So, in traditional
Romanian, the real stomach is <foale> (sing.-plur. the same) (< Lat.
follis) -- a word you won't find in standard Romanian and, hence,
in such a Swadesh list. Why? Because it today does not fit the
standard/high style: it's regional, colloquial, argotic, archaic. It's
been replaced by the recent neologism <stomac>. Pains caused by
gastritis or ulcus won't prompt most of today's Romanians to
say <<Am dureri de foale>> or <<Ma doare la foale>>. OTOH, the
real belly is <burta>, <pântec(e)> and <vintre> (both sing. and
plur.). (This is the order of the frequency in all social strata. In
some regions the 2nd is the 1st, and the 1st the 2nd. <Vintre>'s
frequency is very weak. Significant are the adjectival reflexes
as well: a potbellied man can be either <burtos> or <pântecos>,
and a thing (e.g. a demijohn) can be <pântecos>; they'd never
be *<vintros> (an imaginary word).)
An interesting phenom. occurring in the Rum.-Hung. "interface":
a Hungarian who hasn't learnt Romanian thoroughly automatically
tends to use <stomac> whenever actually referring to the lower
abdomen (esp. to bowel problems). This seems similar to the
English preference for the same word. Strange to me, since
in Hungarian one doesn't use the stomach word <gyomor> when
referring to the neighboring area, <has> [hOS] (the hypogastrium).
(BTW, "a man with a large stomach" will rarely translate into
German as "einer mit grossem Magen"; rather "mit grossem Bauch"
or "mit (grosser) Wampe" or "ein Gewamperter".)
> Richard.
George